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DYRENFORTHTHERAINMAKERBy Alex Apostolides

T hey called themselves theMcGinty Club, and they rompedthrough the streets of El Paso at the turn ofthe century, blowing happy music and raisingmerry hell. Who belonged? The El PasoHerald put it this way: "Everyone who wasanyone in El Paso in the latter 80s and 90seither belonged to the McGinty Club-orwas dead." One of their most talked-abouttricks had to do with a rainmaker who cameto town.It was 1891, not the wettest year ElPaso's ever seen. "It kept on gettin' drier anddrier, and finally it never did rain" was theway one writer put it. The El Paso WeatherBureau logged 2.22 inches of rain by thetime that year was over.

Top: The government was hoping the rainfall experimentsin Texas would produce rain. Heredynamite charges are being set off on Mt. Franklin.Bottom: General Dyrenforth, a Washington patentlawyer.Courtesy Harpers Weekly, vol. XXXV, no. 1816,October 10, 1891.

But in August-time, tall tales came infrom Midland. The Government, theysaid, was setting up an experiment inmaking rain. Chief honcho rainmaker wasa gentleman with the impressive name ofGeneral Robert St. George Dyrenforth. Hewas a Washington patent lawyer obsessedwith the possibilities of making rain bysetting off huge explosions, and with governmentbacking he'd come with his crewto Midland to turn the dry year wet.The general studied his history, and heknew that after every big battle you gotrain. The noise must have something to dowith it. Senator C.B. Farwell of Illinois wasconvinced by Dyrenforth that if you madenoise loud enough and long enough, youcould, by God, bring rain to places thatnever saw the stuff before. It didn't happenovernight. Farwell tried to get bills passedto raise the money, starting in 1874, but theestimated price tag for experiments wassome $161,000, and the whole thing diedright there.Fourteen years later, they were still discussingthe project, and in 1890 the goodSenator was able to raise the magnificentsum of $2000 for the Department of Agriculture,which was going to overseeDyrenforth's experiments in making rain.The Senator had put up some money of hisown, and Dyrenforth had sent up balloonsfilled with various gases. They were explodedat high altitudes, and the results hadFarwell and Dyrenforth beaming.The experiments were successfulenough to send Farwell inning to recommendDyrenforth's appointment as a specialagent for the Agriculture Department,charged with making rain.They really went whole hog this time;the Senate appropriated $7000 for theexperiments. The two thousand bucksthey'd appropriated the year before hadn'tbeen spent, so Dyrenforth now had thewild sum of $9000, with which he began hisnoisy career in February of 1891. He evengot himself an assistant, one Prof. John T.Ellis, of Oberlin College. Washington nowhad a rainmaking team. The next problem?Where to hold the experiments.Washington was having itself a veryrainy year, so messing about the Potomacwasn't going to prove a thing. Summer wascoming up, and the project hadn't evengotten off the ground. And then help camefrom Texas.The 'C' Ranch, out in the middle ofnowhere, 23 miles from Midland, was sufferingfrom the drought. The expedition